The Queen Mother was born on August 4 1900, into interesting times. The world she opened her eyes on was one few of us can imagine, let alone recognise. The British empire was at the zenith,
Queen Victoria still sat on the throne, and powered flight was still an impossible dream.

The new century would bring changes which the parents of the Hon Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon could scarcely have envisaged.

A new politics was already beginning to emerge. February 1900 saw the first meeting, in London's Farringdon Road, of the Labour Representation Committee, bringing together socialists and trade unionists. They chose as their first secretary James Ramsay Macdonald, who had an advantage: he was rich enough not to need a salary.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, were swept to a majority of 134 in the Commons by a tide of patriotic fervour generated by the Boer war. The relief of Mafeking, in May 1900, sparked an extraordinary national celebration. *The event had little military significance, but the people wanted heroes. They got one in Colonel Robert Baden-Powell who, during the siege, had pressed schoolboys into service as messengers - or, as he preferred to call them, Boy Scouts.

It would be three years before the Wright brothers would coax the world's first powered aircraft off the ground at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But in 1900 Count Ferdinand Zeppelin was on the shores of Lake Constance to watch his first airship take to the skies.

There was still child labour in 20th century Britain, but it was fast disappearing. In 1900 a new Mines Act forbade the underground employment of boys under 13. The Irish Home Rule party in the House of Commons had a new leader, in John Redmond.

A new British newspaper, the Daily Express, was daringly putting news, rather than advertising, on its front page. Strange times indeed.